I’ve been having trouble sleeping off and on for the last couple of weeks. This is different from my usual insomnia because I don’t wake up at witching hours (2:00am to 4:30am), but rather just wake up around 4:30 or 6 and can’t get back to sleep. My brilliant solution for how to install the drawer fronts came to me at 4:30am last Saturday morning.

Normal drawer front attachments are done by taking the drawer out, clamping it evenly on the drawer face, making holes for the handles, installing said handles, and putting it back in place. I couldn’t do this because the drawers themselves are uneven and the openings are also out of square. I needed to mark off where to attach them while they were in place.

Since the doors below the drawers are in place and are level, I had a good starting point. I needed to use a spacer of sorts to hold the drawer front in place while I used an awl to poke a hole through the holes for the handle all the way to the existing drawer front. All my carpentry levels were too thick – I needed a spacer that was about a 1/2 inch thick. Enter Sandra Boynton at 4:30am. I decided to use one of the little girl’s old board books, figuring the thickness to be about right. Went into the bookcase looking for “But Not the Hippopotamus” (my favorite, not hers) and found “Blue Hat, Green Hat” instead. Impulsively, I decided I liked the irony of using a book where 25% of the words are “Oops”.

Blue Hat, Green Hat, Yellow Hat, Oops!

Used Goodnight Moon for the drawer next to the dishwasher. I needed a little more heft on that side.